A tire and associated mold cavity has two general areas: the sidewalls and the tread. In known embodiments, the tread is defined by a circular arc or a series of circular arcs of decreasing radii. In one method of making a tire, a tire width is first assigned. Then, a tread arc width is assigned as a percent of the tire width, and a tread drop is assigned as a percent of the tread arc width. To achieve the desired tread arc width and tread drop, tangent circular arcs are chosen within certain heuristic parameters. Finally, a shoulder profile of another arc or line segment is chosen to blend the tread profile and the sidewall profile. When making a plurality of different tire molds for tires of different sizes, the heuristic calculations are re-run from scratch for each tire mold.